Ten years ago today, the Cold War ended. On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall, perhaps the ultimate symbol of the world's division into two blocs and the oppression on the communist side of the Iron Curtain, was breached. Thousands of people mounted the graffiti-scarred concrete to dance, drink or just peer across the barbed wire, as East German security guards looked on bewildered. In the decade since, many hopes have flared and faded; amid a daily diet of news of conflict and atrocities in far-off places, the world sometimes seems no safer than it was before. There has been change, not all of it for the better. But if the world is not whole, it is healing.
The Berlin Wall became irrelevant the day the East German government announced it would ease border restrictions. Within hours, thousands of "Ossis," as the East Germans are known, crossed to the West, and their footsteps erased a regime that had relied on brute force to survive. The much-feared Eastern invasion of West Germany signaled, not the beginning of a war, but the end of one.
While U.S. President George Bush was careful not to take credit for "defeating" the Soviet Union, others were not so reticent. Conservatives in the United States beat their chests and applauded former President Ronald Reagan for forcing the communists to spend themselves into bankruptcy in a fruitless attempt to match U.S. defense outlays. Others credited European leaders, who pushed for detente and the much-maligned Helsinki accords, both of which obliged Eastern-bloc leaders to open their doors to Western cultural influences and to respect human rights. Those two forces, argue the Europeans, eroded the Soviet empire from within.